Lye Street

by Alan Campbell

  Carnival would heal.

  The angel groped around her. Her fingers brushed the witch's wrist.

  She grabbed it.

  Ruby screamed.

  Carnival put her boot against the iron bars and pulled. She felt the old woman's shoulder dislocate. Then she heard a snap, fabric ripping, followed by a softer, rending sound. Warm liquid spattered her face. Still the witch shrieked and gibbered. Carnival reached back through the grate. She groped the wet floorboards until she found a stockinged foot. It tried to struggle, pull away from her, but Carnival held on firmly.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Snow lay thickly over the forest of the third hound. The trees seemed even older and more twisted here, furred with hoarfrost. Overhead, an inkscrawl of black branches patterned the eggshell sky. Sal Greene's boots creaked as he walked ahead of his two companions.

  "You seem much keener than before to reach my master's domain, Mr Greene."

  "No point mucking around," the prospector replied. “If we're going to find the heart of the beast, then let's get it done quickly. I only hope your master isn't as fussy as he was the last time. Clock's ticking, Cope."

  Even Ravencrag seemed to have resigned himself to Greene's determination. He kept pace with the other men, although his scowl looked like it could have pickled cabbage.

  They walked for several minutes before Greene became aware of a crimson glow in the forest ahead. A mist? He sniffed the air, and a feeling of sickness crept over him.

  Cope said, "The Forest of–"

  "I know," Greene snapped. "I know what it is."

  It was a forest of corpses. Like the edge of a shore, the snow ended and a land of blood began. Ahead of them the ground glistened red. Trees of bone and flesh grew from this mire, all gangrenous and rotten. Every bole and bough bore a wound of some description, as though the trees had been set upon by an army of butchers. The whole forest was bleeding.

  Ravencrag's stomach bucked.

  "This is heart of the demon?" said Greene.

  The thaumaturge's eyes were wide with wonder. "The strongest aspect of Basilis to survive intact," he confirmed. "This is the heart of Ayen's Lord of Warfare. Is it not glorious?"

  To a carrion crow, perhaps. The prospector left this thought unvoiced. He did not want to converse any further with Othniel Cope.

  "I can't do it." Ravencrag spat and wiped his mouth. "Gods help me, Sal, don't make me go in there."

  "What did you expect?" snarled Greene. "Daisies?"

  The phantasmacist heaved again.

  Greene growled and cricked his neck. "You and me, then, Cope." He set off into the crimson woodland.

  They marched through red mulch until their boots were sodden. The ground rose and soon became treacherously slippery. It squelched under his boots. To Greene's disgust he was forced to clutch at flesh and bone in order scramble up the worst of it. Maggots infested the roots. Ribbons of fluid trickled and gurgled all around him. He spied veins in the pallid earth and veins in the branches. The stench was so rich that it coated his tongue and cloyed at his throat.

  Cope seemed unaffected by the forest; indeed, the thaumaturge appeared to delight in the wonders around him. With passion he said, "Basilis will steer us, as he did in the Forest of Teeth."

  "Steer us to what?"

  "To the part of him he wishes us to retrieve."

  Greene decided he'd rather not know. Unease crawled over his skin. If this rancid woodland represented the heart of Basilis, how could he, in good conscious, set the foul thing free? He thought of Cope's dog, that mangy, defenceless pup they'd left in Mina's care. The branch had granted the mutt vision. The sword had given it teeth. Yet this last forest was a place of muscle and bone. What monstrous thing would Mina's pet become?

  Finally the slope levelled. They crested a ridge from where the prospector could gaze far across the landscape ahead.

  Red trees stretched to the horizon under a white sky. The forest glistened like a sea of rubies. In the far distance, phantasms swooped and glided on translucent wings, their torsos scintillating gold as though clad in brilliant armour. Angels? They flocked around ivory-coloured hillocks which rose in places between the trees.

  Greene halted, panting, almost driven to despair by this hellish vision. His topcoat hem and sleeves were greasy, clotted with scraps of gore. Liquid sloshed within his boots. He felt something wriggling between his toes.

  Othniel Cope made an observation: "My master's pets have been busy making nests."

  "The flying things?"

  The thaumaturge nodded. "Once they were the memories of warriors who attended Ayen's court, but they have since become something else. Basilis has long forgotten Heaven."

  Greene continued to survey the landscape. "How far does the forest stretch?"

  "It goes on forever, Mr Greene."

  "Then I need a break. Forever is a long way."

  They rested under the boughs of a gigantic corpse tree. Sap trickled from a score of puncture wounds and other lesions, gathering in hollows between the roots. Four yards above the ground a deep gash had cleft the trunk open, revealing corrugated muscles, and three white, rib-like protrusions. Greene leaned against the tree, but recoiled when the bark trembled. He heard insects crawling inside.

  By the time they set off again, the prospector felt no less wearier than before. They moved downhill, into the vast wet woodland. With no sun to keep them travelling in a constant direction, Cope consulted his branch frequently, making alterations to their route when necessary. For a while they followed the course of a stinking brook in which white nodules floated, fording it eventually where it widened and became shallow.

  Later, Greene saw a ghostly figure watching them from among the trees. He grabbed the thaumaturge and pointed toward the apparition.

  "It's dead," said Cope. "The dead have no power here."

  "I wish Ravencrag was here to see it."

  "Instead of you?"

  "Naturally."

  The sky darkened; gloom crept into the Forest of War. The phantasms appeared more frequently, but they never moved, simply stood in silence and watched the two travellers pass by. Greene's revulsion did not waver. Each footstep he took was one too many. His instincts rejected this weird place: the sky which was not sky, the odours from the weeping trees, and the suck and slurp of the red morass under his boots.

  Finally the thaumaturge signalled for him to stop. They had reached the edge of another clearing, somewhat brighter than the surrounding woodland. Narrow vein-like roots radiated from the centre of this space, where, like some hideous tuber, grew a beating heart.

  Cope brought out the sword from the Forest of Teeth, and then crouched to inspect the roots. After a long moment he frowned. "This is extremely complex. I shall have to make many delicate cuts. It seems that the heart is quite intricately connected to the forest."

  "Let me," said Greene. He reached for the sword.

  The thaumaturge shook his head. "You have already injured my master enough."

  Greene sighed. "Suit yourself. But I reckon it's going to hurt him whichever way we do it. I'm of the school that thinks it's better to get the pain over with quick, rather than suffer prolonged agony. But that's just me. Basilis might prefer you to sever his veins nice and slow."

  Cope's throat bobbed.

  "Let me just stand back a yard or two," added Greene. "I don't want to be in the way when the spurting starts."

  The thaumaturge's face had paled. He stared at the sword, and then at the network of red roots spreading across the ground. "Perhaps you're right, Mr Greene," he said. "After all, your blunt approach has already freed two of my master's aspects. I wouldn't want to cause Basilis any unnecessary pain."

  The prospector held out his hand.

  Cope handed him the sword.

  Green killed the man with a thrust to the back of the neck. The thaumaturge's body toppled forward to the ground.

  "Sorry, Cope," muttered the prospector. "In a fair fight you might've bea
ten me. I got my family to think of."

  He'd weighed it up all the way through the long trek through the Forest of War. To kill Carnival, he'd have to release Basilis. But why replace one monster with another?

  And now he had little Mina to think of. Basilis would remember his humiliation at the hands of the Greene's granddaughter.

  The penultimate Scar Night of the year was due, and the old man had come to accept that he would probably die. But Ellie still had fifty years to sell the house in Lye Street and leave town. They could start a new life in Sanpah or Clune. At least there they'd have a future.

  He wiped the blade clean on Cope's topcoat, then strode towards the beating heart of Ayen's Lord of Warfare. All around, ghostly figures had appeared among the corpse trees, hundreds of them. They looked on in silence.

  The old prospector raised his sword above the heart. "Time to die, you bastard."

  Whirling smoke claimed him before the blade fell.

  Chapter Nineteen

  As the afternoon before Scar Night drew on, the city tensed. Labourers, eager to finish their work by sunset, bustled through Deepgate's crooked lanes with hoppers of stone, iron and aggregate for the ongoing construction and expansion of the Warrens. Smiths worked harder at their forges. Priests rushed from home to home with their census books, and merchants chose to leave early for the River Towns.

  People became edgy.

  More brawls than usual broke out. In the League of Rope the tinkers and scroungers faced increased persecution. There was a small riot, and one serious house fire which claimed the lives of an elderly man and a goat.

  The Tooth arrived, loaded with Blackthrone rock and mortar for the temple's new Rookery Spire. The great machine loomed above the edge of the abyss, its funnels disgorging black smoke into the heavens, reminding the faithful of the power of God.

  When night fell, Carnival went to Lye Street.

  Her broken wing and hands had healed, leaving fresh scars in her pale flesh. Since she'd rubbed off the witch's paint, a sense of calm had come over her. She no longer feared what she might find.

  A gaping window admitted her to the top of the lye tower. She found herself in a cramped room with dead bees upon the floorboards. A skeleton lay on a mat in the corner: the remains of a woman, still wearing an old fashioned brown frock. Someone had left flowers around the body, but they had withered long ago. Ash from the lye vats below covered everything in a grey veneer. A number had been scrawled on the wall opposite.

  510

  A doorway led into an inner hall which opened into three more rooms. Carnival wandered into the first of these.

  This chamber was identical in size and layout to the first. Fragments of a smashed mirror lay strewn across the floor. The lack of ash on the glass made the angel think it had been broken recently. She saw a name scrawled on the wall.

  Henry Bucklestrappe

  Carnival returned to the hall, and then entered the third room: another chamber, similar to the first two. On this wall, somebody had written a second name in chalk.

  Flora Whitten.

  Fragments of chalk still lay on the floor beneath it. Carnival picked up one of these pieces and copied the name, Flora, writing it underneath the original. The handwriting matched, just as she had always known it would. She let the chalk fall to the floor.

  In the last room she found a single word, written in her own hand.

  Rape.

  A small diary had been left for her on the window ledge. Carnival picked it up. It was ancient, mould speckled, with a tarnished silver clasp. The leather bindings were falling apart, the pages brittle and yellow. She held the diary to her chest and peered out of the window. From the base of the lye tower, the street rose to the temple watchtower at the opposite end. Carnival could see the silhouettes of winged statues, falcons, perched upon the building's summit, and the outline of a ballista. A Spine assassin patrolled the spaces between, nursing a crossbow in the crook of his arm.

  The cobbles below the watchtower glimmered faintly in the starlight, but the tenements on either side of the street were dark and shuttered, heavily barricaded against Scar Night. Against her. Deepgate remained silent, but for the ever-present sound of creaking chains

  Chapter Twenty

  Someone was hammering on the door. It being Scar Night, Sal Greene decided not to answer. He wasn't that dumb. Instead, he remained exactly where he was under the upturned bathtub and hugged Ellie and Mina closer to his chest.

  The pup yowled.

  Mina nuzzled it and giggled.

  A male voice shouted up from the street outside. "Open up, citizen. Presbyter Scrimlock's orders."

  Scrimlock's orders? Greene lifted the bathtub.

  "Dad?"

  "Stay here, princess; look after Mina. I'll just be a minute."

  He padded down the stairs, and unbolted the door.

  Six Spine assassins stood in the street outside, their pale, wasted faces like those of the dead. Was this about the smuggling investigation? The bastards picked a fine night to batter on his door.

  Greene shot a wary glance at the old lye tower beside his house, alert for wings, before he returned his attention to the assassins. "If you're looking for the House of Fans," he said, "you've come three streets too far." He pointed up the hill. "What you need to do is go back up Lye Street, left at the watchtower–"

  One of the assassins interrupted him. "We are not searching for a brothel, Mr Greene." She had the same dull, vaporous eyes as the others. Scrapes in her leathers indicated heavy use. "You are required to come with us for your own safety."

  So Cope had been right. The Church knew all about the angel's curse.

  And they thought a nice conversation under the darkmoon would be a good way to start ensuring his safety?

  "Thanks, but I'll pass." Greene closed the door.

  He managed to get ten steps down the hallway before they broke it down.

  Chapter Twenty One

  Darkmoon had risen by the time Carnival closed Flora Whitten's diary. She wondered why the girl had chosen to use a rope instead of a knife in the end. So as not to spill any blood?

  To ensure she'd go to Heaven?

  The angel slipped the small book into a pocket in her leather jerkin. It fitted snugly, as though it had worn a space for itself over many, many years. Had Carnival always carried the book with her?

  She gazed out across the starlit rooftops.

  How many more secrets had she hidden from herself? What part of her had always known the truth about Henry Bucklestrappe's crime, had made him a promise, and then strived to keep it all these years? Carnival must have watched and persecuted his family for generations. It seemed to her that she harboured a ghost inside, the shadow of a murderer who had stolen her memories and who roamed the city while the angel slept.

  Now this ghost had brought her to Lye Street, to murder someone the angel didn't know: Sal Greene, a man innocent of his ancestor's crime yet doomed to die for it. Who had Flora Whitten been? Had Carnival known her? Or had the scarred angel just happened to find the girl's diary all those years ago?

  She pulled out her knife and studied the hilt, the circle marking she had drawn on so many walls throughout the city. Then she brought out the crumpled flowers and ribbons she'd taken from the witch. For a long moment she looked at what she held in each scarred hand.

  I can make all that is ugly about you beautiful.

  Carnival threw the knife away, and heard it skitter across the rooftops. Then she tied the flowers and ribbons into her hair.

  The sound of crashing timbers came from the street below.

  From the lye tower window, Carnival watched six temple assassins drag Sal Greene out of his house and then herd him up Lye Street towards Barraby's watchtower. The thump of blood rose in her ears and soon drowned out his curses. She could suddenly smell the building around her, the stench of ash and rainwater and brick. A sharp pain in her fist made her gasp. She was clutching a shard of broken mirror in her bloodi
ed fingers. Dark, terrible eyes peered back at her from the glass. She did not recognise the face in the reflection, but the face clearly recognised her. She stifled a scream.

  Was this insanity?

  Carnival met that lunatic gaze for as long as she could bear, then flung the piece of mirror away and heard it shatter against the wall.

  She sucked in a deep breath, and another. And then she concentrated, squeezing the window ledge until the sound of howling faded from her veins.

  Quickly, she climbed through a hatch in the floor, down the ladder into the dark belly of the tower. Huge vats loomed under a canopy of rusted pipes. Water dripped, striking eerie, soulless notes in the gloom. The heartbeat of the building itself. Beside the vats she found a stone trough full of brown liquid.

  Carnival slid Flora's diary into the caustic solution and watched it sink from sight.

  She left through the front door.

  A blow punched air from her lungs, pitching her backwards. She crashed against the door frame, the impact jarring her newly-healed wing. When she opened her eyes she saw that she had been engulfed in a chain-mesh net. Carnival hissed and ripped the fine metal links apart, shedding the remains of the net like a flimsy cocoon.

  She looked up.

  Temple assassins swarmed over the rooftops on both sides of the street, more Spine than she'd ever seen together before. She heard the whisper of steel, the click of bow latches, the squeal of windlass coils being rewound. Six of the assassins were spinning metal nets around their heads, while a score of others loaded bolts and harpoons into their crossbows.